


Jaime’s Disability (and how Cersei and Brienne react to it)

by janie_tangerine



Series: in which I stash meta/essays/everything that's not fanfic [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Ableism, Amputation, Book 3: A Storm of Swords, Character Analysis, Disability, Essays, F/M, Meta, Nonfiction, Post - A Feast for Crows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-09 21:21:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18925273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: In which I meta-ed and spent a reasonable amount of words comparing how Jaime's disability affects his relationships with both Brienne and Cersei.





	Jaime’s Disability (and how Cersei and Brienne react to it)

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted in a longer-ish but less polished version which was more veering on shippy territory on tumblr [here](https://janiedean.tumblr.com/post/179498244703/hi-lavinia-can-i-ask-for-your-opinion-about-jaime); the original question was _Can I ask for your opinion about Jaime and his relationship with his stump? I mean, everyone knows he hates it, but is there a possibility that Brienne can change his mind? I belive he hates it most of all because his sister hated it, but it can be changed even a little if he finds someone that does not care._ I ended up polishing it and making it more objective and also put it on the meta book I gave Gwen in which I also put the previous two metas. I have another two on gender role reversal with jb and jc plus how both ships are courtly trope deconstructions that I'll hopefully find time to publish asap. For now have a rant. ;)
> 
> As usual: everything belongs to GRRM and the quotes are there to prove a point, I own nothing except the rants. ;)

The main issues when it comes to Jaime’s hand loss, to _him,_ are that he hates it as it’s basically a perpetual reminder in his face that he lost his right hand (which was what made him the best swordsman around) and with it he’s lost one of the things that (in his conception at least)  _defined him_  ie ‘if I don’t have that what am I worth’ (which he thinks more than once in that _A Storm of Swords_ chapter when he wants to let himself die). For example:  
 

> “The lack of my hand is troubling me.” The mornings were the hardest.  **In his dreams Jaime was a whole man** , and each dawn he would lie half-awake and feel his fingers move. It was a nightmare, some part of him would whisper, refusing to believe even now, only a nightmare. But then he would open his eyes. 
> 
> //
> 
> The wench would have told him he had to eat before he slept, to keep his strength up, but he was more tired than hungry. He closed his eyes, and hoped to dream of Cersei. The fever dreams were all so vivid …  **Naked and alone he stood, surrounded by enemies, with stone walls all around him pressing close.** The Rock, he knew. He could feel the immense weight of it above his head.  **He was home. He was home and whole**.  ** _He held his right hand up and flexed his fingers to feel the strength in them. It felt as good as sex. As good as swordplay._**  Four fingers and a thumb. ** _He had dreamed that he was maimed, but it wasn’t so. Relief made him dizzy. My hand, my good hand. Nothing could hurt him so long as he was whole_**
> 
>  

Counting that the whole spiel Cersei (and him) have going is that  _they’re not whole without each other_ , the point is: he’s not feeling  _whole_  without the right hand because it’s what makes him good at sword fighting which in turn gives him worth. If one looks at the whole procession of thoughts in the dream above, we have the following: he feels  _alone and surrounded by enemies_  and  _he had dreamed he was **maimed**  _(which is what actually happened) which in turn equates his lack of a hand with inability to protect himself/the others around him/makes him feel vulnerable. At the same time, he has the right hand  _in the dream_ , and right hand = swords = swordplay = sex:  _the four things are all put on the same level_  (and let’s remember that Brienne is the last person he fights before losing it) and having it back puts him back in a supposedly favorable position because nothing can hurt him as long as he’s whole (ie: he has the hand  _and_  Cersei) and he supposedly can do the job himself.

The problem is that, of course, he doesn’t have the hand anymore, so, to him, the fact that he doesn’t have the hand is a reminder that, again, he can’t do his job, and if he can’t do his job he isn’t whole, and if he isn’t whole he can’t fight (which is basically half of what he loves, the other half being Cersei, Tyrion and what other relatives he has that he does) and he can’t have Cersei either and  _he can be hurt._

Another thing that’s fundamental to understand about the weirdwood dream is that after it tells us  _what he fears most_  as in a) being hurt, b) the people he loves leaving him behind, c) his guilt over his supposed responsibilities in Elia’s death and her children’s (which technically is  _not_  on him but he doesn’t feel like that), d) Cersei leaving him behind and after  _all of that happens_ … Brienne shows up, asks him for a sword to  _protect him_  after he  _frees her from her chains_  and she gets it and she does it until hers is the only bright light in the entire cave, and after that dream he goes back for her and saves her life in the bear pit doing one of the few truly _heroic_ deeds anyone has ever done in the books, and he doesn’t need the hand to do it.

Going back to how Brienne and Cersei react to it, we can start with the latter’s reaction.

Now, Cersei hates it for a number of reasons, mainly because:

  * It’s not aesthetically pleasing;
  * It sets Jaime apart from her because they aren’t mirrors anymore;
  * It cuts down his usefulness by a lot since he can’t fight as well as before;
  * She cares about the fact that if he’s her male counterpart then she can be with  _herself just male_ , she doesn’t care about  _him_ or his needs or anything else of the kind, which ties with the fact that by losing the hand he also loses something that was intimately tied to his old life (in the bath he tells Brienne he lost the hand he killed Aerys with/pushed Bran down the tower with/made love to Cersei with), so by losing it he  _also_  has to narratively lose Cersei  _and_  put himself on the track he wanted to be on when he was fifteen and believed in being Arthur Dayne.



As far as far as Brienne is concerned though, Jaime’s  _entire issue with losing the hand takes a positive light._ While Cersei hasn’t wanted anything to do with it (the stump/his lack of hand) and has been disgusted openly/called him a useless cripple because of it when she’s supposed to love him no matter what, Brienne has actually  _helped him live through that loss even when she was supposed to hate him_. As we discussed above, post-hand loss he was pretty much completely helpless and she spent the rest of their time together giving him pep talks when he felt like giving up,  _materially_  cleaning him up and telling him that losing the hand didn’t mean his life was over. Also, after that they have the Harrenhal bath there is some fairly heavy-handed cleansing symbolism with Jaime unloading why he killed Aerys for the first time in his life to  _her_  while  _taking a bath_  during which  _they’re both naked_. But when he about faints she catches him and she’s  _gentler than Cersei_  (and later Cersei isn’t gentle with him at any point) and again, his lack of hand is nothing Brienne even thinks about. 

This becomes obvious from the way Brienne thinks about their fights in her chapters in _A Feast For Crows_ , compared to how Cersei behaves around him:

 

> Brienne remembered her fight with Jaime Lannister in the woods. It had been all that she could do to keep his blade at bay. He was weak from his imprisonment, and chained at the wrists. No knight in the Seven Kingdoms could have stood against him at his full strength, with no chains to hamper him. Jaime had done many wicked things, but the man could fight!  _His maiming had been monstrously cruel. It was one thing to slay a lion, another to hack his paw off and leave him broken and bewildered_. Suddenly the common room was too loud to endure a moment longer. She muttered her good-nights and took herself up to bed.  
> 

Versus:

 

> Her own twin interrupted her musings. “Would Your Grace honor her white knight with a dance?” She gave him a withering look. "And have you fumbling at me with that stump? No. I will let you fill my wine cup for me, though. If you think you can manage it without spilling.”“A cripple like me? Not likely.” He moved away and made another circuit of the hall. She had to fill her own cup. 
> 
> //
> 
> “And our valiant Lord Commander?” _“Ser Jaime is at his armorer’s being fitted for a hand. I know we were all tired of that ugly stump._  And I daresay he would find these proceedings as tiresome as Tommen.” Aurane Waters chuckled at that. Good, Cersei thought, the more they laugh, the less he is a threat. Let them laugh. “Do we have wine?”
> 
> //
> 
> Jaime hugged her, his good hand pressing against the small of her back. He smelled of ash, but the morning sun was in his hair, giving it a golden glow. She wanted to draw his face to hers for a kiss. Later, she told herself, later he will come to me, for comfort. “We are his heirs, Jaime,” she whispered. “It will be up to  **us**  to finish his work. You must take Father’s place as Hand. You see that now, surely. Tommen will need you …”He pushed away from her and raised his arm,  _forcing_  his stump into her face **.**  “A Hand without a hand? A bad jape, sister. Don’t ask me to rule.”
> 
>  

In her POVs, Cersei basically either mocks him or thinks the stump is ugly and doesn’t want it  _forced_  into her face (reminding her he’s-not-her-exact-mirror anymore), while Brienne’s only horrified that  _they did it to him in the first place_  and she considers it cruel, but she doesn’t give two fucks about his hand being ugly nor considers him lesser. For that matter, she goes even further:

 

> “I will find the girl and keep her safe,” Brienne had promised Ser Jaime, back at King’s Landing. “For her lady mother’s sake. And for yours.” Noble words, but words were easy. Deeds were hard.
> 
> //
> 
> When she was small, her nurse had filled her ears with tales of valor, regaling her with the noble exploits of Ser Galladon of Morne, Florian the Fool, Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, and other champions. Each man bore a famous sword, and surely Oathkeeper belonged in their company, even if she herself did not. “You’ll be defending Ned Stark’s daughter with Ned Stark’s own steel,” Jaime had promised.
> 
> //
> 
> I know. It was on that very road that  **Ser**  Cleos Frey had died, and she and Ser Jaime had been taken by the Bloody Mummers. Jaime tried to kill me, she remembered, though he was gaunt and weak, and his wrists were chained. It had been a close thing, even so, but that was before Zollo hacked his hand off. Zollo and Rorge and Shagwell  ** _would have raped her half a hundred times if Ser Jaime had not told them she was worth her weight in sapphires_**.
> 
> //
> 
> She had learned the truth of that once she went into the world.  _Even_  Jaime Lannister had come at her that way, in the woods by Maidenpool. If the gods were good, the Mad Mouse would make the same mistake. He may be a seasoned knight, she thought, but he is no Jaime Lannister. She slid her sword out of its scabbard.
> 
> //
> 
> Perhaps she had made a mistake in abandoning Ser Creighton and Ser Illifer. They had seemed like honest men.  _Would that Jaime had come with me, she thought …_ but he was a knight of the Kingsguard, his rightful place was with his king. Besides, it was Renly that she wanted. I swore I would protect him, and I failed. Then I swore I would avenge him, and I failed at that as well. I ran off with Lady Catelyn instead, and failed her too. The wind had shifted, and the rain was running down her face.
> 
> //
> 
> I could slink back to King’s Landing,  _confess my failure to Ser Jaime, give him back his sword_ , and find a ship to carry me home to Tarth, as the Elder Brother urged. The thought was a bitter one, yet there was part of her that yearned for Evenfall and her father,  _and another part that wondered if Jaime would comfort her should she weep upon his shoulder._  That was what men wanted, wasn’t it?  _Soft helpless women that they needed to protect?_
> 
>  

Now, in all of those quotes she  _looks up to him_ , never thinks of him as crippled or ugly or useless and at most has pity for him because he lost that hand. But the fundamental part of it is that _she literally avenges him for it_ when in an early POV she runs into some of the Bloody Mummers (Timeon and Shagwell) and fights them:

 

> He was better than Pyg, but he had only a short throwing spear, and she had a Valyrian steel blade. Oathkeeper was alive in her hands. She had never been so quick. The blade became a grey blur. He wounded her in the shoulder as she came at him, but she slashed off his ear and half his cheek, hacked the head off his spear, and put a foot of rippled steel into his belly through the links of the chain mail byrnie he was wearing. Timeon was still trying to fight as she pulled her blade from him, its fullers running red with blood. He clawed at his belt and came up with a dagger, so Brienne cut his hand off.  _That one was for Jaime_. “Mother have mercy,” the Dornishman gasped, the blood bubbling from his mouth and spurting from his wrist. “Finish it. Send me back to Dorne, you bloody bitch.” She did.
> 
>  

Brienne literally  _kills Timeon_ after cutting his hand off thinking that it’s for Jaime and after then she kills Shagwell after making him dig the graves for the others:

 

> "I have no spade.”
> 
>   
>  "You have two hands.” _One more than you left Jaime_.
> 
>   
>  “Why bother? Leave them for the crows.”
> 
>  

And that’s what she says before she stabs him to death and getting  _really worked up about it_ :

 

> She knocked aside his arm and punched the steel into his bowels. “Laugh,” she snarled at him. He moaned instead. “Laugh,” she repeated, grabbing his throat with one hand and stabbing at his belly with the other. “Laugh!” She kept saying it, over and over, until her hand was red up to the wrist and the stink of the fool’s dying was like to choke her. But Shagwell never laughed. The sobs that Brienne heard were all her own. When she realized that, she threw down her knife and shuddered.
> 
>  

So, Brienne  _killed two of the Bloody Mummers while thinking specifically of how they hurt him/maimed him and thinking that she’s doing it for him,_ as in: to avenge the fact that he lost the hand because they took it from him and she obviously Brienne doesn’t care about whether Jaime has the hand or not beyond thinking it was unfair and unjust to take it from him and leave him without rather than just kill him to the point of avenging the act, and she loves him to the point where (as stated above) she dreams about him all the time including him putting a cloak on her and would rather die than bring Catelyn-turned-Stoneheart his head.

This, when textually that loss of the hand has been tied to the loss of sense of security _and_ loss of feeling safe as far as Jaime is concerned,  _but_  Brienne is associated with keeping him safe, keeping him  _alive_  at both basic and not-so-basic-level, the rebirth imagery, literally  _caring_  for him regardless of her personal feelings, this when Cersei does nothing of that even when they’re supposed to love each other. Given the role reversal going on with them, if they’re together he doesn’t need the hand if he has her  _who is also framed as the knight to his damsel most of the time_ including in his head/when he dreams about her appearing and keeping him safe with Oathkeeper just after he frees her (meaning: lets her be the knight she’s meant to be). The one time it doesn’t happen is the bear pit and she’s stuck with him through pretty much everything and has seen the best and worst of him and still didn’t  _leave_  and he doesn’t know but she’s willing to get hanged for him: it’s pretty much textual that Brienne is meant to be Cersei’s foil _also_ when it comes to how she relates to his disability.

 

(This, without counting how they are also foils when it comes to gender role reversal and courtly love deconstruction, but they will be the subject of the next two essays in this series.)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Jaime’s Disability (and how Cersei and Brienne react to it) [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21908437) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)




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